When Moon Gyet and his mother Low are approached by Gee, a Chinese man who has secured their American citizenship papers, Gyet makes a decision that alters his identity — literally. Lloyd Suh’s play “The Far Country,” running at Berkeley Repertory Theater, captures the nuances of Chinese American immigration in the early 20th century. Gyet becomes Gee’s “paper son” and, over the course of the play, is forced to reckon with the meaning of taking on the last name of another man, as well as the process of immigration through the intense interrogation on Angel Island.
Directed by Jennifer Chang, the play brings audience members back — in a way that is poetic and moving — to a time when Angel Island was used as a detention center. I talked to Chang about the production, her take on the historical wave of Chinese immigration, and how it resonates with our current day.
While I understood that Chinese people in America were able to secure citizenship, then return to China, and bring back with them “paper sons,” the play illuminated the fact that the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco enabled this loophole while the Chinese Exclusion Act was law. What I came away even more confused about — as the daughter of immigrants myself — is why people would choose to come to a country that didn’t want them. I can wrap my head around the reasons for people fleeing persecution or seeking refuge, but I don’t quite understand the incentive for those who could be comfortable in their home country.
I asked Chang her thoughts on this in the context of the play. “Being an immigrant is such a wild and crazy thing,” the director and multidisciplinary artist acknowledges. “I understand why my parents never wanted me to be an artist, but at the same time, it’s not a surprise for someone to do something as risky as art, when you see what the immigrant experience is about: risking everything for something unknown.”
The Chinese immigrants who arrived after…
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